


stay; there's nowhere I'd rather be

by queenofthecon



Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen RPF, Chef RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Secret Crush, the first rule of rpf club is we do not talk about rpf club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-01-27 07:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21388630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthecon/pseuds/queenofthecon
Summary: Claire Saffitz doesn’t want to have this stupid, painful crush on her co-worker, on her friend. All Claire wants is for the too-set taffy monstrosity on the counter to turn itself into perfect Skittles so she can go home and drink a beer and eat noodle kugel. Is that too much to ask?DISCLAIMER JUNE 2020: Please note that this fic was written months prior to the realisation that Alex Delany had previously made misogynistic, racist and homophobic comments. I apologise for including him in this fanfic and will never write him as a character again. However, my options are to add this disclaimer or delete the fic as I have no motivation to re-write anything for now, and as this work is fictional, I chose to add this disclaimer. So, just to be crystal clear:Screw you, and your fake fuckboy ‘charm’, Delany.Thank you for your time.
Relationships: Brad Leone & Claire Saffitz, Brad Leone/Claire Saffitz
Comments: 25
Kudos: 105





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please do not do as I do. Standard RPF club rules apply - this is not real, will never be real but I will still die on this flaming trash pile forever and always amen.
> 
> Please respect the F in RPF stands for fiction. None of this is real and no harm is intended to anyone depicted fictionally here. I just had fun pretending, don't hate me or anyone else who uses RPF as escapism from the awful world going on around us. We are dreamers hiding in secret.

**DISCLAIMER JUNE 2020: Please note that this fic was written months prior to the realisation that Alex Delany had previously made misogynistic, racist and homophobic comments. I apologise for including him in this fanfic and will never write him as a character again. However, my options are to add this disclaimer or delete the fic as I have no motivation to re-write anything for now, and as this work is fictional, I chose to add this disclaimer. So, just to be crystal clear:**

****

****

Screw you, and your fake fuckboy ‘charm’, Delany. 

Thank you for your time.

***

One day, in an agonising rush of truth, clarity and half a bottle of red wine, Claire finally acknowledges that she has a crush on the tall, handsome, boundlessly energetic Brad Leone.

It’s a simple fact she’s lived with ever since; like that the subway will always be late when she’s in a hurry, that she misses St Louis in fall, and iced is the only way she can drink coffee. Brad Leone has been under the surface of her skin for a long, long time, and it’s almost impossible how much she’s gotten used to that bubbling feeling in her chest when he grins at her, like she’s the only person in the world that matters, because that’s so invariably, unwaveringly him.

Thing is, crushes are pointless, and for the eighteen months she’s acknowledged that slow-growing crush on Brad, all it’s done has hurt and hurt and hurt. You can rip the weed out by the root, salt the earth, but it still comes back, like she’s been cursed.

Claire still dates. It’s easier to ignore, to go out with a guy and push him back in her head, forget for entire months sometimes that it doesn’t ache, but at the end of the day, Brad is still there with that impossible grin and bright blue eyes, intense and pressuring. He upends everything Claire thinks she knows about herself and her limits every damn day. It’s out there, in every video, how she looks at him too brightly, how she giggles like an idiot, trips over her own feet just because he’s there, the bickering and the hard days when she snaps at him and wants to throw the stupid candy from the top floor of the building. Crushes make her dumb and pathetic, and she doesn’t _want any of this_. Because years of crushing just breaks your ribs and turns them to dust.

She doesn’t want to have this stupid, painful crush on her co-worker, on her friend. All Claire wants is for the too-set taffy monstrosity on the counter to turn itself into perfect Skittles so she can go home and drink a beer and eat noodle kugel. Is that too much to ask?

Annoyingly, the monstrosity just sits there on the faux-marble countertop of the test kitchen, refusing to turn itself into candy and instead taunting her with deafening, awful silence. Her head’s a freaking mess, even in the quiet of an empty kitchen on a Friday night when all that’s there is the rattling hum of the refrigerator and a lingering smell of sauerkraut. The Skittles are a failure – again – just like everything else.

The sun’s long set behind the horizon, thirty-five storeys up; Kevin and Dan had gone home an hour ago, leaving Claire to sit and figure out the answer to life, the universe and how they make the inside of a fucking Skittle. She pokes and prods at her brightly coloured too-hard or too-soft candies, just hoping for some give, for some miracle. Five batches, all different and none of them right. A complete waste of two days of work and five different boiling temperatures. Failed, failed, failed.

For the first time in a long time, it’s all too much. It’s all a mess. She’s a mess.

Her fingertips tap deadly on the countertop and before she knows it, Claire drops the solid mass of orange Skittle taffy on the floor from a height. It shatters into a thousand pieces at her feet like glass, the shards scattering everywhere, skittering and skipping under every nook and crevice they can. The sound echoes in her head and she realises that it’s time. She wants it all to just stop; the cameras constantly in her face, her failures on show, the long nights and non-existent weekends. Her mind is made up, there and then, but life fucks her over in many ways and it’s about to do it once more, with feeling.

“Claire?!” Brad calls suddenly from the back of the kitchen, paper grocery bags dangling in his giant hands. He looks like he’s seen a ghost as he walks towards her. “You nearly gave me a fricking heart attack! What the hell’s going on?”

At this point Claire’s past caring about how she seems; whiny, petulant, annoying is her guess, but it changes nothing. “Getting rid of the evidence. And a little revenge… that I now need to clean up.” She turns back to survey the damage her wrath has wrought. There’s orange dust and shards scattered across the floor, in her shoes, under the ovens probably. She can’t bring herself to care just yet or feel guilty. “I quit, Brad, I can’t do it anymore.”

“Quit?” he says incredulously with a laugh like he doesn’t believe her, dumping the grocery bags on his station. Claire picks up the other solid lump of sugar (lemon flavoured) and goes to smash it on the ground before he catches her tiny wrist in his hand. “Woah, woah, woahh, Jesus, you’re gonna break the whole kitchen with shrapnel, Miss Hulk,” he grins, but she can see the worry behind his eyes. “What’s gotten into you?”

“It’s my amorphous failure, so it’s mine to smash,” she demands, glaring at him when he literally plucks the taffy from her fingers and tosses it on the counter with the others. Brad keeps his hand wrapped loose around her wrist, dragging her away from her station, towards the windows since she’s supposedly such a flight risk. Candy shards crunch beneath their shoes, the whole room smells of oranges and her head’s just swimming with frustration. “Will you let go of me now?”

“Not until you tell me what’s going on, Claire; use your big-girl words.” Brad says guardedly, eyeing the other lumps of candy behind them as if they’re bombs about to go off, or she’ll throw one at his head. “And it’s not about Skittles so don’t even try to bullshit me, Half-Sour, I know you better’n that.”

For all of three seconds, she considers denying that anything except Skittles is wrong, but he’s standing there, towering above her with his backwards cap on and she feels it all at once; the cake orders, the magazine, the colds and flu draining her month after month. All Claire wants is to throw herself in the garbage too.

“I’m so _tired_,” she eventually mutters, looking into his eyes as he drops her wrist. “It’s just… too much. Constantly failing, recipes, cameras in my face…” she wrinkles her nose, doesn’t mention that she’s finding it harder to push her emotions away too. “And that’s just here; I got a whole business at home running on my own. I need it to just… _stop_.”

Brad’s eyes are intense on her, and he’s blinking rapidly. It’s the first time she’s seen him this still and focussed, which is kind of a thing for him. “You’re not quitting.”

“What else I can do, Brad?” Claire rolls her eyes and steps back to her station, if for nothing than to get away from this conversation. “Ugh this is such a mess,” she groans, dumping the candy blobs in the trash where they belong.

“Telling me…” he says, still staring at her, now rubbing the back of his neck. “Didn’t really peg you for a quitter, Claire, I gotta tell ya…”

That hits her like a tonne of bricks from a height too. It’s not fair he knows the holes to poke in her. “Don’t, don’t do that,” Claire replies softly, eyes almost glassy. She steps past him to get a broom, maybe just to get away from the guilt in both of them. “Look, just go home, Brad, I gotta clear up.”

She can’t look at his face or she’ll crack and shatter too and that’ll be the end of everything. Claire relishes the dark of the cleaning closet and _knows_, makes her mind up away from the intense curiosity of Brad Leone: she can’t keep doing this, can’t keep pretending that work isn’t draining the life from her, bit by bit. It’s not a good reason anymore, to stay just for the videos or to get a few good recipes in the magazine.

When she gets back, broom in hand, there’s no sign of Brad and she thinks he’s gone for a split second until a red backwards cap pops up from behind her counter and she hears the grumbling under his breath. A smile crosses her face when he stands upright and tosses larger shards of orange Skittle filling into the trash. Of course he’s helping.

“Seriously, fuck sugar, Claire,” he groans as his head disappears again. She sweeps the smaller parts into his giant outstretched palms, the exhaustion filling her now she’s finally getting some help. “Sugar’s just poison, I tell ya. Y’know, back in like the 80s and 90s, big media made fat the enemy but… turns out, when you take fat out of food, guess what? Tastes like shit.” He turns and dumps another handful of taffy in the garbage while she sweeps into piles. “So, what’d all these corporations do? Stick a load of sugar and salt in and hey, food don’t taste like complete shit anymore! It don’t taste like food either but who cares, right? So’s now they got like a… uh… a marketing ploy, and they’re pandering to the dumbasses in Spandex who know nothing about fat because it was just all evil back then and they’re making bank off it. We get addicted to the sugar, man, diabetes, obesity… it’s real fucked up. So, in conclusion; fuck sugar. Sugar suuucks, Claire.”

“Yeah it fucking sucks ass,” Claire can’t help but snort and roll her eyes; looking at the disaster on the floor, she’s finding it hard to disagree now, not when sugar’s screwing her over too. It’s one of his rants, the conspiracy nut inside him, insane truths she’s heard before, but only ever shook her head at. “But if sugar didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have a job, nobody would hire pastry chefs. Who’s gonna eat dessert that doesn’t have sugar in? Ew. Never gonna happen.”

“I’d hire you,” Brad grins up at her from where he’s squatting on the floor and dumps the final bits of orange candy dust in the trash. “In fact, if I ever get my ass in gear and open up that little seafood place in New Jersey I been talking about, you can come make desserts. Make whatever cake you want, I don’t care.”

“Brad, you don’t like cake!” she laughs softly, shaking her head at the image of her living in _New Jersey_. “And you literally just said sugar’s poisonous and the devil invented it and it’s causing all these problems-”

He grins again, impossibly wider, as she taps the bristles of the broom over the sink to let the last of the dust fall off. “I never said it was the devil, Claire, oh my God,” Brad groans and steps by her side, running water over his hands. “I’m just saying, Saffitz, if I’m serving anyone dessert at my restaurant, I want it made by you. Only the best, babe.”

Claire knows it’s a cheap compliment, and he doesn’t mean it, but it makes her feel a thousand times better than if she’d nailed Skittles on the first try. “Oh Jesus Christ, fine, fine, you win. I won’t quit. Talk about emotional bribery.”

The new grin he gives her is wider still and crinkles his eyes, hip bumping hers next to the sink. “Alright, Claire, coming through and stepping up. Just get through this candy making bullcrap, give it a couple more months. I promise you’re not gonna regret it. Scout’s honour.”

“You were a Scout?” She asks, resting the broom against the counter as she washes out the sink. “Sure you were…”

“You doubtin’ me?” Brad teases. “I got all the doohickeys, badges or whatever and I still do my good deeds, alright…”

From the way he’s just calmed her down off an actual tirade, she’d have to agree, but Claire’s not gonna let him win. “Oh yeah, such as?”

He looks at her like she’s crazy; “Uh, duh, I just helped you clean up _your _mess, how does that not count?” Brad grabs the broom before she can reach it, like he’s got a point to prove. “And! And the order came up short this week, like fricking always, so I told Gaby I’d stock us back up on what they missed. I got four gallons of chicken broth I hauled ass from Whole Foods all the way up here, plus like a shit load of garlic and all kinds of crap. I even made a list, Claire! A. List.”

Brad digs a crumpled receipt from the back pocket of his khakis, practically shoving it in her face. Claire turns it over in her hand, just barely able to make out his incredibly juvenile handwriting. “Chicken stock, garlic, tomato paste…” she reads before pausing. “Kashmiri saffron and… marcona almonds?”

“Andy.” Brad says as if that explains everything: it does.

Truthfully, he would have impressed her just from the magnitude of him writing a list. On paper. “You got marcona almonds in Whole Foods?”

“Nah, had to go to a Spanish deli few blocks downtown, y’know, where all the tapas places get their good shit from,” he calls out as he puts the broom away for her.

By the time he’s back, Claire’s started unpacking the bags he’d dumped on his station, grabbing the packets of marconas, eyes widening at the price. “Jeeze, they really are marconas. Good find, Brad, I didn’t think there were any left in the city.”

His thick fingers somehow deftly pluck the packet from her hand before Claire even has a chance to think about eating one. “Get your own, Saffitz. Andy’ll have my ear off for like a month if he thinks I forgot ‘em.”

Claire groans dramatically; she’s exhausted and hungry and just wants to curl into bed with those almonds. She loves salted, roasted marconas with their warmth and bitterness. “Oh, come on, you bought three whole tubs, I can’t have a single almond?” She’s smiling brightly, tugging off her apron.

“Trust me, you got zero self-control and I am helpless to keep you from yourself,” he smiles and perhaps it’s her imagination, but something flickers there, across her brain like a synapse has melted because suddenly she wants nothing more than to show him what zero self-control really means. “I’ll make you a deal.”

“Another one?” she asks, eyes focussed on his as her fingers deftly pull off the band keeping her hair away from her face. The thick waves fall softly across her face and the headache that had been building is gone in an instant.

Blue eyes flicker over her face, scrutinising. “I’m gonna give you this entire tub of super fucking overpriced nuts _and_ let Andy bitch at me for the next week about it,” his face contorts in disgust. “Only if you promise me you’re not quitting.”

Chewing on her lip gives her something to worry at. It takes a moment for her to consider; whether he realises it or not, Brad knows how to give her an out if she wants, that there’s a bargaining chip to be had. Control over her life is all she really needs, and he’s giving some part of it back to her, however tiny. “Six months,” Claire negotiates. “I’ll stay six months.”

He seems to doubt her for a second before tossing her the almonds, gloating. “$15 tub of nuts for six months of your time, I think I won that one.”

The plastic rips in her hands as she opens it up, grinning. “Andy’s gonna bitch about you for at least week. I would have stayed here up to a year to see that.” Claire shoves half a dozen of the almonds in her mouth. “Checkmate, Leone.”

Brad grins and shakes his head. “Worth it, Saffitz. You just wait and see what’s on the cards.”

“Can’t wait…” she mutters. She wants to thank him so much, to grin too brightly, to feel it all intensely, but her head won’t let her. It refuses to even say thank you because her voice would break, Claire would break.

It doesn’t help that his eyes are almost sparkling, that the smell of oranges is still in the air and there’s a taste of salted almonds on her lips. Brad’s there, and that’s enough to make her want to stay a little longer, to feel out this YouTube thing, get her feet settled. After all, what’s one bad day compared to a hundred good?

And then, one night, in exquisite agony and exhaustion, Claire feels how much a crush can really, truly, _hurt._

His phone rings to break the silence and the sound consumes all the warmth and colour from the world around her, it takes her crush and makes it crush her. The name on the display is visible before it calls off and he shoves the phone aside with a groan: her name is Jenn.

“Shit. She’s gonna kill me, I totally forgot…” Brad mutters, looking through his phone almost frantically. But she can’t bring herself to look at the display and instead grabs the groceries to give him an excuse, to get away from her ribs turning to dust. “Sorry, I gotta-”

“Go on,” Claire replies with a too-bright smile, not quite meeting his eyes. “I can log all this stuff and put it away, go meet your girlfriend.”

“You sure?”

She nods before he’s even finished asking, everything shattering now. Just isn’t gonna happen. “Yeah. Least I can do.”

Phone shoved back into his pocket; Brad claps his hands together, already running for the exit. “You’re the best, Claire! See you tomorrow!” His footsteps bounce, excited, energetic, golden retriever-eqsue Brad.

Claire is just so, so _tired_.

\---

At least work gets better.

Oreos can't get much more delicious than they already are and that's what Claire thinks too, until she decidedly knocks it out of the fucking park after barely two days’ work (day one does not count no matter what Dan says). It's almost too easy, and too delicious and she kinda cheats by using Oreos to make Oreos but even Chris doesn't seem to call her out on it, so Claire calls it a win.

Hers are _insanely_ good on the spectrum of cookies: snappy, salty-sweet and fruity with dark black cocoa notes. The filling is rich and buttery but melts in the mouth, there's a clean twist and they even dunk in milk like a normal Oreo. But it’s a win without feeling like a win: Brad’s not there to try them, off getting another vacation out on BA’s dime and something about the kitchen feels different without him in the periphery of her vision to give her shit for kinda cheating. It’s not cheating, is it? 

Does Brad even like Oreos, with his blatant disregard and disrespect of sugar? That might be the thing to break her away from the schoolgirl fluttery-butterfly feeling, if he hated Oreos. Nobody hates Oreos. But what if he does? What if, in her rose-tinted glass haze, she had overlooked that he hates the best cookie ever invented? How well does she actually know him, after all?

The Oreos sit in front of her as filming cuts and she takes the leftovers home just for herself and definitely not to save one for him. What would it even matter - they're perfect and she's not gonna let the imaginary Brad stuck inside her head tell her otherwise just because he doesn’t like cookies and cakes and all the things Claire loves, and he’d tell her that it was like cheating anyway.

Oreos garner her nearly 9 million views, though, so at least she’s doing something right.

\---

On paper, they don’t – they shouldn’t – work well as partners: she’s methodical, planned and perfectionist and measured in every way he’s not. Claire whines and groans and pouts – she knows – like a petulant kid, but he helps her anyway, he gets his hands stuck in. In fact, they’re currently wrapped around a cordless drill, helping her to make Twizzlers hollow. They both know it’s not really gonna work.

They’re friends, right? It’s what friends do, especially in their job where recipes get tested a dozen times or more before they can even get a rung further up the ladder. Claire strives to get as close to perfect as she can get, and it drives her (and everyone else around her) insane. Very slowly, drip by drip. It’s not meant to work. They just shouldn’t be perfect together.

And they’re not perfect, because – as he tells her repeatedly – nothing is.

“I don’t know about this,” she says as he finds the tiniest of drill… things to drill a hole in a metal skewer: the plan is to place the skewer dead centre of the piping tip like a lollipop stick in a popsicle mould just to get a hollow centre. “You sure it’s not gonna get metal in the liquorice?”

“What, you doubtin’ me again?” Brad mutters, his eyes on the drill fasteners, digging through the mass of different bits. “I’ll get you a hole in the freaking Twizzlers, Claire.”

“But how am I gonna stop it from collapsing?” she asks absently, her head firmly in test kitchen mode. There’s cameras in her face again but she’ll put up with it this time, because at least it’s not a gigantic disaster yet. “Braaaad…”

There’s a grin playing at the corner of his mouth, “I don’t know, Claire, that’s your job, right?” he replies, tightening the smallest of drill things. “Hold the ends for me…”

Each of her hands holds tight to an end of the skewer, half of the metal supported by the counter and half suspended mid-air so the drill could go through. “Oh God,” she cringes, jumping in surprise as he leaps in with both feet and just goes for dead centre. Claire squeals a bit, her hand jolting.

“Fuck… lil bastard…” he swears when he realises the hole’s in the wrong place and went through the edge. “Claire, hold still…”

The ruined skewer is discarded and she picks a new one, holding it down. Brad’s hand comes down over hers on the counter, his palm dwarfing hers, pressing it down onto the bench and Claire’s pretty sure this isn’t gonna work either because his skin is like fire. Her eyes flicker up to see his face: his tongue pokes out between his teeth as he drills down into the metal dead-centre and she’s about to die from how cute that is.

“Oh my God, that’s perfect,” she beams, his hand slipping off hers as she holds the skewer up for the camera to see, her heart leaping. “This is gonna be great!”

There’s another grin thrown at her again but maybe she just imagines the slight pink tone under the newly-tanned skin of his cheeks. “What I gotta say, all in day’s work, Claire,” he follows her as she goes back to her station, cameras tracking them both. “Can I try?”

“Yeah totally,” she replies, her head set on getting Twizzlers right this time. “I got a crappier test batch we can try it out on first.”

He’s leaning on his entire upper body on her station, waiting un-Brad-like and _patient_ when she gets back with three batches of Twizzler liquorice for them to try.

“How am I getting these skewers to stay in one place?” she asks curiously, watching as he threads a solid skewer through the hole in the other he’d just drilled. “They’ll just slide around, won’t they?”

Brad groans. “Shit. Yeah, you’re right…” he pulls apart the extruder mechanism currently attached to her mixer, inspecting it. “You got that hot glue you were using on the bamboo ones? If you get the thing to stick to the other thingy and make it like… what’s it called, the corner angle… thing-”

“Perpendicular,” Claire says, suppressing a smirk as he sits down on her stool. “So, glue the metal to the plastic on the outside?”

“Yeah, won’t touch the food then,” Brad asserts, fiddling with it while the glue gun already on her station heats back up. She’s standing between his knees, fiddling with the placement of their invention. They’re silent for a moment, waiting for the light on the glue to go off while he holds the thing steady, trapped. “Hey, Claire, whatever happened to that Oreo I never got?”

Claire’s teeth run over her bottom lip, her eyes fixed on the glue gun. “Yeah, about that, I was gonna save you one, but…” Claire’s gaze flicks to him and she grins at him in triumph, a swell of pride in her chest. “I did want you to try it, but they were so, so good. I kinda took the rest home.”

He smirks knowingly. “They’re in your freezer, aren’t they?”

“Yup,” she doesn’t even have the decency to be sorry. “They were delicious, even Chris said so.”

“I bet,” he beams up at her as she tests out the glue gun on a random piece of cardboard. “You always rock it in the end, Saffitz, you don’t need me to tell you that.”

She makes a random glue shape on the cardboard, satisfied that it’s liquid enough to work with now. “I know,” she mutters, concentrating as she glues the skewer to the plastic of her extruder. “It’s not that, I just didn’t know if you liked Oreos…”

“Who doesn’t fricking like Oreos, what- ow, hey, careful!” he warns just as hot glue drips on his finger.

Claire’s thumb swipes it away before she can stop herself. “Sorry, sorry, you distracted me!”

“Burning my hand off here…” Brad grumbles, his eyes trained on her glue gunning skills.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Claire shoots back. “I think that’ll do.”

“Great, my fingers will thank you.” He teases, fingers flicking over hers as she’s messing about with it. “Fuck yeah, man, that’s so cool. This is gonna work, Claire.”

It doesn’t, really. The mixture’s a little too soft for it to not collapse but Claire can’t be mad about it. He tried his best, and so did she.

\---

Turns out that big boss man Rapo – the Editor Extraordinaire – is pissed about the six month thing, Claire can tell. How he found out, she has to wonder, though. Claire’s told a couple of people about that night and so has Brad – Chris, Carla, and Rhoda all know, probably Molly too – but she hates to think about leaving her friends. It seems too real when people know, like she’s announced she’s going to be an Elvis impersonator and they’re suddenly expecting her to burst into a song. Why does it seem so final?

But it’s official now, she guesses. Rapo knows. Six months, probably as many videos out of her they can get, and she’s going, saying a glad goodbye to taffy and Twizzlers and tempering chocolate. Her gut feels like there’s a stone lodged inside it for the entire walk back from Rapo’s office to her desk, but that’s fine. She tells herself it’s normal, just nerves and nothing else. These white walls, identical offices and desks, open-plan places where her friends all chat while they’re working, they feel like home so much. Part of her is scared at what happens next.

“_Dude, you let her go up there alone_?” she hears the voice of Alex Delany ask somewhere in the distance, around the corner and down the hall from where she’s standing stock still. Great. Fantastic. Now Claire’s stuck between walking in on an awkward situation and eavesdropping. “_What’s Adam gonna say about it?_”

“_Ain’t no letting her about it, alright, Claire can handle Rapo like a pro_,” Brad’s voice replies and she can hear the annoyance in his tone. “_Sides, what’s she gonna do, quit harder? C’mon, Delany, you know what Claire’s like. He knows if he takes the ball out of her court, she’ll just walk away._”

It’s quiet for a moment. Her back is against the wall, pretending she’s not listening, but not moving either. Okay, so it’s wrong – she’s not perfect.

_"She could quit sooner_,” Delany points out eventually, and Claire’s kind of wishing she had. “_I needed to ask you something but… if Claire’s gonna be gone in a few weeks, I don’t know…_”

“_What?_”

Delany sighs audibly. “_Look, is there something between you two for real? Cos I kinda-_”

“_You wanna ask out Claire?_” Brad interrupts and she can hear the laughter in his voice. “_Claire Saffitz?_”

Her eyes bug. Alex Delany, really? The guy with the model friends and clubs, that Alex Delany wants to ask her out?

“_Dude, if I’m stepping on any toes here-_”

“_No, no_,” Brad says suddenly. “_No stepping on toes, man, I got a girlfriend. Look, me and Claire… we… she’s a great gal. But, you know… I’m not… I can’t…_”

Oh.

“_You have actually seen you two on video right?_” Delany asks as if he doesn’t believe a word Brad’s saying. Claire can. Two years of slow flirting doesn’t mean anything, apparently. “_You can’t tell me there’s nothing there._”

Claire’s heart is breaking and hammering in her chest all at once, as if it can’t decide whether this will hurt or not. But she can’t move, can’t do anything except listen to Brad Leone deny any feeling for her.

“_Look, I love Claire, she’s the best. But we work good as friends. It’s… it’s Rapo, he likes the chemistry and the flirting, brings in the views. Besides, you know Claire._” She hears his sigh. “_She’s awesome, man._”

Her heart decides to break.

“_So… it’s all good if I ask her out? Cos if she’s really leaving in six months, I gotta strike while the iron’s hot, right?_” Delany replies, sounding un-phased by all of it. “_I’m thinking dinner, maybe an old movie. She seems like the old movie kinda girl._”

Brad snorts in laughter. “_Sure, Delany, like she’d date you. By all means, y’know, go for it. I’d love to see you get shot down for once. Claire’s got a brain in her head-_”

It’s not happening. She can’t listen to any more of it. If her brain could think through anger, hurt, heartbreak, she’d be dangerous, and right now all she wants to do is shove the cordless drill into Brad Leone’s foot for being misleading, but she can’t. It would mean acknowledging how much of an idiot she’s been, dreaming up stupid scenarios like a schoolgirl, looking at his hands, thinking about what their first kiss would be like. Never gonna happen, Saffitz. It’s all been a game, a lie.

Her fingertips wipe furiously across her wet cheeks as she turns back the way she came, just to get away from them, from Bon Appétit, from the world of people waiting for her to run out the door. It’s not fucking fair. He’s an _asshole_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't begin to say enough thank yous for all the incredibly kind, sweet comments on this thing and on my Tumblr. I love this pairing, this tiny niche fandom and the incredible writers all contributing to it. You try and stop me from writing more of them - remember the first rule of RPF club.

Saturday nights in New York aren’t supposed to be spent barricaded in your apartment; it’s the fourth time in a row she’s listened to her heartbreak playlist on Spotify and if the doorbell rings, she’s not answering it. The whole being_ broken_ thing is dumb and cliché and she’s kind of regretting letting herself hurt, but songs are meant to do that for you, aren’t they? They’re meant to give motion to how you feel, for how your heart’s breaking or how you found something better. Turns out they don’t write songs for finding out the co-worker you had a crush on isn’t anywhere near into you and was flirting with you for more video views. Strangely absent a category on Spotify, that one. That’s a Brad Leone specialty.

Heartbreak isn’t enough as a word for all that’s happening inside her brain. Vortexes of anger, hurt, betrayal, disbelief somehow coalesce into a single feeling she can only describe as like being wrung out to dry by rough, uncaring hands, manipulated and abandoned. Claire’s exhausted just trying to think of the metaphor.

The wine tastes pretty good, though, and there’s a purring, warm cat curled in her lap because animals are the one good thing about the world. Felix sits there, half asleep, happy in ignorance while Claire drains the glass and ignores the three texts from Brad sitting unread on her phone. Drunk texting is a bad idea, always.

Saturday nights in New York are not meant to be spent wondering how dumb you are for letting yourself think you had a shot at something special. She’s doing this whole thing _wrong._

Claire refuses, she puts her foot down, draws a line in the sand: he will not break her.

\---

For all his usual charm and confidence, Alex Delany takes another four days to ask her out – four _freaking_ days. It gets to the point where she starts to wonder if she’d hallucinated him talking about it to Brad, but sure enough, Alex Delany asks her out. And for better or worse, there’s witnesses. She swears it’s just her blind luck that Brad’s in the vicinity when Delany leans over her cubicle wall to talk to her one rainy morning.

“Hey Claire, you got plans tonight?” Delany says casually, his head tilted slightly. Even she has to admit he’s got a pretty face, clean cut, super modern. She can’t imagine him whittling or getting drenched on a crab boat, just for a random example.

“Tonight? No, why?” she replies, trying to act normally.

Brad’s spinning circles in a desk chair in the opposite corner, talking to Molly and Claire sees him glance over, watching them with interest for a flash of a second. Or at least he does when the chair spins in the right direction.

“You wanna come with me to this new place Fifth and Main? It’s what they replaced Freddie’s with, like super classic Italian, nothing out there.” Delany grins at her widely and it’s hard because she’s been out to dinner with Delany before, they all have. It’s a whole night of bars, clubs, little bistros and big ticket places because Delany knows everyone in the city in food somehow. They’d all been on his restaurant crawls, seen the photos on Instagram the next morning of his coffee runs and hangover cures; Delany’s social life makes her feel tired just looking at it on the internet.

But Brad spins in their direction again and she feels him suddenly, his eyes searing hot at her, from half a room away. If she says no, she’ll be proving Brad Leone right (an absolute no) but if she’s says yes, it’s _because_ Brad said she’d say no. 

“Uh…” Claire hedges, fiddling with her papers, trying to buy more decision time. Claire’s never been great under a time crunch.

If Alex notices her hesitation, he doesn’t care. “Friend of a friend is the new front of house, says the food’s awesome, in-house bakers, homemade ricotta and everything. Come out with me, Claire.”

“What, just you and me?” she asks, now paying full attention to Delany, biting back a nervous smile. So maybe it also feels good to get asked out too after the bullshit she’s had going through her head over the last four days. He’s a good guy, right?

“Yeah, come on, it’s like a super-chill date, Claire, just fun.” She can see his eyes flick down, and the confidence draining out of him the longer she strings it out. “No cameras and I’ll pay for the drinks.”

And then there’s that burning feeling of blue eyes staring – or trying not to – and it’s hardly fair since Claire can’t exactly say no. But, she surmises, when stuck between proving Brad wrong or proving Brad right, only one way is correct.

“Who am I to pass up free drinks courtesy of Alex Delany,” Claire beams at Delany, tucking her hair behind her ear and avoiding the glare from across the room. “Eight okay?”

If Delany is surprised by the yes, he doesn’t show it, just beams bright and boyish and steps back from leaning over her cubicle. “Awesome. See you there?”

“You got it,” Claire replies, gathering her research notes while still grinning a little more brightly still. “Can’t wait, Alex.”

She never calls him Alex; it feels a little weird on her tongue if she’s being honest. He’s _Delany_.

“See you round, Claire,” Delany’s smug grin and swaggering walk seem to echo out of the room with Molly’s unsubtle wolf whistle hot on his tail. Claire’s cheeks are burning red hot now because – for all that rock-and-a-hard-place bullshit – she actually wants to get to know Delany a little better too. It feels okay, she thinks.

She’s not one for spite or malice, or even a prank or two, but the wave of immense satisfaction that hits at the shocked look on Brad Leone’s face is worth every ounce of guilt she’s gonna feel when this blows up. All good things do. It’s just a moment, but something else crosses over Brad’s eyes, a thing she can’t pinpoint and can’t even acknowledge because it’s too much.

He's even stopped spinning in his chair.

Feeling every eye on her, with Molly laughing like a maniac – well, like Molly – and Brad’s tense glare, Claire shuts down her computer, breezing past them both to get back to work and cherry cobbler testing. Definitely not to smile politely like there’s nothing going on. She’s fine. Absolutely. There’s no way she’s walking faster than normal to escape the thudding footsteps close behind her.

“Woah, woah, hey, hey, Claire, hold on,” she turns as Brad’s jogging to catch up, rolling up his sleeves like he’s about to wade elbow deep into her love life. “So, you and Delany, huh?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess,” she shrugs, turning and walking again, ignoring the skip in her stomach. “Why not?”

For once, he takes a second to reply. “But since when was that going on? You two been talkin’ or hangin’ out or-”

Claire rolls her eyes, clutches her notes to her chest and increases her pace down the hall back to the elevator bank, but it just makes him walk quicker too. “I don’t know why you care so much, but he _asked_, Brad, what does it matter? You don’t like Alex?”

“Alex…” she hears him mutter disdainfully under his breath. Ugh. “Come on, Claire, Delany? He’s clean and pretty and gets like freaking mani-pedis! Posi-lutely not your type.”

“What’s does that even _mean_?” she glares back at him, just a pace behind her, and Claire’s about ready to throw him out of the window if he doesn’t leave it the fuck alone. “He’s handsome, and funny, why can’t I go out with him? Because you said so? Am I not good enough for an Alex Delany?”

She practically punches the button for the elevator and – as if it knew – it turns up immediately. Claire lingers in the elevator doors, almost daring him to cross the threshold and make this worse. Tears are pricking at her eyes, but she refuses to let him get a win because he’s done too much _hurt_. It's not fair – she wants her pot-shots, she wants to get to him too, but he’s just pissed she proved him wrong by going on a date with Delany.

His hand stays the doors from closing, and it feels so claustrophobic with this giant looming over her, backing her into a corner. Those blue eyes that made her weak once are wide and dark now, intent on her face, intent on making this harder. “Jesus fucking Christ, Claire, that ain’t what I’m sayin-”

“Sounds like it to me,” Claire bites, clutching her notes tighter to her chest as he slips into the elevator with her. “What are you doing, Brad?”

The doors slide closed with a metallic thud as she hits the button for the Test Kitchen floor. “I just didn’t know you liked Delany, that’s all, y’know you and me are sposed to be copacetic, or whatever,” he claims, putting his palms up in surrender. “Scuse me for looking out for ya, Saffitz. I’m a hundred percent sure Delany’s – sorry, Alex – isn’t trying to just get into your pants. Cos he’s known for long term relationships, right?”

Her mouth drops open and her head tilts back at the fucking audacity on him.

“Wow. Wow,” she runs her lip through her teeth, trying to not be that girl and throw it in his face that he hurt her because it’s even worse now. “Does _Alex_ know what you think? No, know what, it doesn’t matter, because who I date is not in any way your choice. God forbid Brad Leone wants his friends to be happy.”

“I know you, Claire,” his voice is suddenly wired and rough and she feels cold metal at her back. One of his palms is flat against the elevator wall, twitching like he’s barely keeping it together. Claire knows because her fingers clench at the paperwork pressed to her chest. “You just…” she sees him swallow thick, staring down at her feet. “You can do better.”

The doors ping open and she runs.

\---

At least Delany’s a pretty good date. Sadly, she is not; Claire’s been on edge since this morning and it’s making her too-quiet, too-reserved for the sweet, funny man sitting across from her in his navy sport coat with the perfectly popped collar and true vintage blue jeans. She knows they’re vintage because he told her.

Alex Delany is every other girl’s dream.

“Claire?” he asks as their food finally comes (twenty minutes late, but it’s a new restaurant. It happens, she’s not gonna complain about it.) “We’re friends, right?”

“Yeah,” she replies earnestly, poking her fork at her short rib ravioli with cured egg yolk and girolle mushrooms; it smells delicious, salty and buttery and savoury, but she’s just not hungry. “You don’t think so?”

“No, no, of course we are. But I meant are you okay?” he asks so genuinely, leaning forward on the table as if she’s too far away for him to hear. “You’ve said like three words all night and that’s really, really not like you, Claire. I once asked you about French art and you talked my ear off for three hours until I just walked away.”

She smiles but her tongue feels stiff and heavy in her mouth and her brow contorts in frustration before she can stop it. “Sorry. Just a bad day, really, honestly. It’s not this – not you – just, I…” Claire gives up on her ravioli and instead reaches for the wine instead. “I think I agreed to do this for the wrong reasons, maybe,” she bites her lip, looking up at Delany. “Not that this isn’t… good? I think it’s good, right?”

He chuckles and reaches for the wine bottle on the table, topping up the glass she’d half-finished already. “You know, there’s such a thing as thinking way too much, it’s super common among pastry chefs. Hyper-focus on tiny details, never knowing when to stop messing with something. That’s why your Mom’s apple pie’s better than that weird deconstructed one uptown,” he says, and Claire remembers his own 20 minute rant about it in the office three days after the fact. “This is just dinner if you want it to be, I’m not asking you to sign your life away to me. I just lucked out that a pretty girl who’d 99 percent of the time say no, actually said yes. Why doesn’t matter.”

Claire smiles a little, shakes her head and decides not to be so… Claire about it, to not let Brad get inside her head anymore. “Ugh, you’re right. You’re right. How are you always so intuitive? It’s not fair.”

Delany looks at her as if she’s an idiot for about half a second. “Claire, I don’t think you’ve ever had an emotion that wasn’t advertised across your face a half second after you have it.”

“Hey!” she picks the fork back up and smears a ravioli through a swoop of cured egg yolk. “Not true! I have secrets.”

“Totally true,” Alex grins, shaking his head at her. “Come on, it’s like Claire-TV half the time. You rolling your eyes, pouting, glaring…” Delany digs into his braised pork belly, shaking his head at her. “Seriously, it’s nice not to have to guess what mood someone’s in.”

Claire snorts a little in laughter. Pasta and wine really do make her feel better like all of the time. “If I’m on a shoot, usually it’s a bad one. Maybe I need to learn how to be more subtle.”

“Oh God, don’t. It’s so much easier like this,” he replies, leaning back a bit now she’d started warming up. “People can be so stubborn and weird about their feelings, y’know? Honesty, always best policy, Claire.” Alex looks over at where Claire is greedily swiping bread through brown butter sauce with crispy capers. “How’s the food?”

At least she has the strength of will to blush at her own new-found voracious hunger. “Pretty damn good, actually, how’d you get in this place?”

“One of Brad’s old culinary school buddies is the front of house here, I asked him if he could hook me up with a table rez,” Delany replies casually, eating his pork belly with almost as much hunger and abandon as she’s tackling her pasta. “I owe Brad a million favours now, apparently. I think he was banking on you skipping so he could go.”

Claire blinks and looks down, licking butter absently from her lip. “Brad got you in here?”

“Yeah, couple weeks ago, he was talking about it, I asked,” Delany glances up at her and frowns as she barely looks up, doesn’t even say a word. “Claire?”

“Hmm? Oh, sorry,” she says, swiping her hair back from her face where it was falling from her messy bun. “That was nice of him.”

It’s hard to ignore the way Delany pointedly stares at her, even though she’s still eating her dinner and letting the thoughts wash over her about why Brad was so pissed at her for saying yes to Alex.

“Okay, I’m gonna guess that this whole thing before about going on a date with me for the wrong reasons is about Brad Leone? I say his name and you clam right up again and you kinda look like you sat on a thumbtack or something, Claire,” he says more measuredly. “Honesty.”

She can feel her cheeks go pink and her brow furrows again. Maybe he has a point about her being easy to read after all.

“Look, it’s not that. It’s so dumb, honestly…” she says after a second. “I heard you and Brad talking in the hall the other day, near Rapo’s office.”

For the first time that night – maybe ever – it seems she’s the one who’s caught Delany off-guard. “Oh…” he reaches for his own wine. “How much of that you hear?”

“A lot. Mostly about how Rapo asked Brad to flirt with me, apparently…” she admits, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. “Sorry. I just… I like spending time with you, but I don’t wanna date you just to spite him.”

Delany shrugs. “For what it’s worth, Brad’s full of shit, about everything,” he pokes her leg under the table as she looks away. “Fucking… so, the guy’s an asshole sometimes. He’s from _New Jersey_, it’s ingrained in their blood from birth, Claire, I mean…” he shudders and Claire smiles. “Come on, you and me, it’s just some fun, okay? No commitment, no guilt about nothing, especially about proving that I’m more dateable than Brad. Help me to help you, Claire, we can keep this thing going.”

Laughter bubbles from her chest. “Come off it, Delany, I know that nemesis thing is just a joke for the internet, you don’t actually hate each other.”

“I like you better though,” Alex shrugs. “Okay, maybe we shouldn’t lie to Brad.”

“You think?” she says, sneaking a bit of his pork belly.

He smacks her hand away with his fork as she’s victorious in her theft. “But you gotta do something about it. You’ve got to be around each other for like six more months, film a million videos with him. It’s gonna be weird.”

“Brad and I aren’t on the best terms,” Claire licks sticky pork sauce from her fingertips unashamedly. “Guess I’ll just have to quit sooner...”

To his credit, Delany doesn’t try and talk her out of it on his first breath. “That what you really wanna do?”

“I want a lot of things, but can’t do it all,” she sips at some water, fast running out of pasta and bread. “I’m turning down freelance jobs for BA, I got a book I need to write that’s gonna take a couple of years developing recipes, there’s restaurants and bakeries asking me to help develop menus with them. I know I owe a lot to Adam, and I love the job, but you put _this_ in the middle, it’s becoming an easy choice. I can’t keep staying where I feel on edge, or like… _wrong_, does that make sense?”

“So, do it,” Delany says casually, as if it’s the easiest choice to make. “Call the world’s bluff, take a risk on yourself,” he grins like the social chaos demon he secretly is. “You live in the one city in the world where risks can actually pay off, Claire. Put this shit behind you, move on. The company can cope or pay you a hundred grand an episode. I claim a ten percent manager fee.”

In another life, another world, where she’d never met Brad Leone, Claire thinks she might have dated a guy like Delany, might have been happy to come out of her shell for a Delany. His cool-meter is off the charts, he radiates pure boyish charm and he knows everything about all the trendiest spots in the city. But she has met Brad, she knows Brad – or thought she did – and it’s just not going to happen while there’s cracks in her heart waiting to be spackled over.

“You’re a good friend, Alex,” she smiles sincerely. “Sorry for being a shitty date.”

Delany snorts. “Claire, I once had a date with a girl who stabbed me in the knee with a fork when her boyfriend walked in the door. Trust me, you made the top ten.”

Later, Delany would kiss her cheek and hug her goodnight; the world doesn’t seem quite as cruel after that.

\---

There’s a reason that Adam Rapoport doesn’t attract the nicest comments on the internet, from all kinds and corners who just kinda _know_ what type of man Rapo is: the at-any-cost, keep the magazine going, adopt-adapt-overcome. It gives her too much sadistic pleasure to inform him that she’ll be quitting twice from the same job. And in the space of a couple weeks, too, that has to be some kind of record. Adam Rapoport is as professorial as they come; silvery slicked hair, tailored suits with ironed collars and an inscrutable look about him. He’s not a bad guy, he’s just _the_ _bad guy_.

“Six weeks. Really?” Adam says carefully, leaning forward in the couch because he’s 99% legs. Claire’s not sure what to make of Rapo most days; he’s hard to please, snarky and cutting without seemingly meaning to be. It shouldn’t have shocked her really, that he’d ask Brad to flirt with her on camera. It’s kind of the least he’d do to rake in the views – there’s a whole company with decades of history on his back. “That’s… that’s a shame, really is.”

Sudden, unexpected guilt spears through her and she unfolds her arms from across her chest. “I know, short notice but, Adam, I just need to start actually being able to sleep at night.”

“I get it, Claire, no, I do. Something’s gotta give, right?” he says solemnly, looking past her through the enormously tall windows of his office. Claire doesn’t doubt that he knows what sacrifice and lack of sleep can do – he’s usually one of the last to leave the office floors during the week, meetings on meetings on meetings. “I hate to ask… is there any way we can come to some kind of arrangement? Your new series is pulling in across a lot of demos and I can’t afford to lose that stream right now, not when we’re just finding a voice.”

She frowns, already feeling her resolve crumbling into empathy. “What would you want?”

“How about a freelancer basis? You come in, film some videos, but it’s when you can get in. Two, three days a week, whatever. You have more time for your own, but we keep continuity with the videos and the magazine. Quid pro quo – more advertising for your skills, get a guarantee income, benefits...” he looks at her again, leaning back into the couch. “That sound more reasonable?”

Claire bites her first response back and shuffles around on the couch opposite him. “What’s the rate?”

“Ten percent of the revenue.” He knows that’s a lot. She knows that’s a lot.

It’s not that it’s not tempting, really; there’s a lot of crap she can put up with for that amount of money, even from Bon Appetit. “Every video I’m in? Or just Gourmet Makes?”

“Just Gourmet Makes, at least to start with. One video a week.” Adam says levelly, his fingers intertwining in his lap. “If you wanna do more, we can talk on a series by series basis, see what sticks when it gets thrown at the wall.”

“I want twenty five percent,” Claire haggles. She’s not a total idiot and rent in New York is the fucking worst: she can put up with Brad to get her rent paid on time each month in full, maybe even start saving for something more. “And one video every three weeks.”

Adam sighs deeply, and she can see the vein in his temple popping just a little. “Seventeen percent and a video every two weeks, with full employee benefits, renegotiable after six weeks.”

Claire swallows thickly in her throat: it’s still a big commitment but she knows how much YouTube videos make for BA, for Condé Nast in general, how their magazine subscription numbers keep rising. It’s a good place to be in.

“Let me think about it,” she replies. Everything’s happening too fast, too intensely. It seems barely a minute ago she was pulling her hair out over some fucking Skittle taffy. “Give me a week?”

There’s not much he can do but say yes, she knows. “I can only give you til Friday morning, Claire. I have a board meeting in the afternoon, they’ll want to know what’s going on too.” It seems like a poor excuse to put her under a barrel but Rapo’s trying to keep a dying media genre alive by keeping up with the crowd, by using all the players in his hand. “Yes or no?”

“I can do Friday,” she says, standing up when he does. “I’ll swing by in the morning.”

“Enough with the smug smile, Claire, get back to work,” Adam chuckles.

She really does need to work on her poker face.

\---

Claire loves baking. She loves it with all her heart and soul and all the European style full cream butter in the fridges. Bread and pastry and cakes are fickle, beautiful things – messes of science, art, accident and passion – and when they go right, it’s like the world’s perfect in alignment and she’s found part of herself back from a brink of giving up, of quitting and going back to the drawing board, becoming someone she’s not meant to be. Baking knows the true colour of your soul and reflects it back in spectacular rainbows.

The last pie she takes golden and bubbling from the oven as the sun sets behind the horizon – for all that’s gone wrong in the last couple of weeks – is fucking _perfect_. All day she’s been zoned in her own world, a satisfied smile on her face as tray after tray of ginger molasses cookies and little puffs of flaky pastry filled with cheese and crème fraiche are left on every available surface, wrapped and stored for the beauties the next morning. Before she knows it, everyone’s left and it’s just Claire alone, pink-cheeked from the warmth of the ovens, proud and whole.

Ginger and cinnamon and lemon tint the air and makes Claire miss home, miss Cape Cod, miss family and lakes and trees and her childhood. But there’s one last perfect pie in her oven-gloved hands and the Test Kitchen is home too; her friends are her family, and there’s nothing she loves more than that.

Finally, as the darkness starts kicking in and the lights of New York below flicker on, Claire peels off her apron and untangles her hair from the clip that’s kept it mostly in place all day. She’s exhausted, smiling and rubbing at the kinks in the back of her neck, surveying the wrapped trays of treats in front of her.

Nothing – and nobody – can take _this_ away from her.

“That pie just come out?” Brad mutters from behind her, softer than he’s ever spoken to her in their years of being friends. He’s got more paper grocery bags dangling in his hands, and the sight and memory of it makes her smile. “Something smells good.”

“It’s cranberry-apple spice pie for the holiday issue,” she explains, picking up one of her covered trays of cookies and sliding them into the pantry for the next day. Claire has zero energy or motivation to be angry, to be hurt at him. It’s Brad, and she’s missed him more than anything. It’s felt like too long since he smiled at her, too. “I had some leftover stuff if you’re hungry?”

The paper bags once again get dumped unceremoniously on his station, keys clattering to the countertops as he walks towards her, eyes raking over her quickly. “I’m allowed?” he asks cautiously. “After I was a colossal jackass?”

Claire slides another tray – peppered bacon and tomato galettes – into the pantry and rolls her eyes. “Go for it,” she says, and he hands her the next tray to store. “Even colossal jackasses need to eat.”

“We are endangered as a species, Claire,” he says, handing her the last tray.

“Thank God you are,” she snarks back at him, closing the pantry with immense, unending satisfaction. She turns to cut them a slice of pie, but Brad’s got his face barely an inch from the crust, inhaling the scent like he’s Chris Morocco and she has to bite back a smile. “Give it here, I’ll cut you a slice.”

“A slice? No, no, there is only one way to eat a pie this late in the day, okay Claire?” He pulls a drawer behind him open and grabs two forks – and nothing else – holding one out to her. 

She rolls her eyes but can’t help the grin he gives and her lips curve. He’s halfway into destroying the pie when she carves out her forkful. The fruit is so sharp, it’s almost too much but then there’s a lingering sweetness and herbal citrus notes from cranberry, and the warmth of cinnamon and spice giving way to the soft, creamy, almost caramel, apples. It’s unsubtle, autumnal and perfect for a dark rainy evening. Pie makes everything better.

Brad is Brad, as always, leaning half his upper body on the countertop, barely swallowing the hot fruit before taking another bite. “Fucking A, Saffitz, coming in hot and heavy. That’s good, that’s too good.” He glances up at her, licking his bottom lip. “Is there sumac in this?”

“Yeah,” Claire giggles, getting herself another forkful. It feels good to be on this ground with him – shaky, but familiar. “I thought I’d try something new. There’s a little black pepper and sumac in with the cranberry compote. You like?”

“It’s amazing! Sumac is so fricking underrated,” Brad declares, licking the fork clean. “You making pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving? I looove pumpkin pie.”

She nods and leans her hip against the countertop. “I was thinking about doing like a pumpkin-pecan pie this year. I better get on that kinda soon, huh?”

“Uh yeah you do, Claire, so you can make me one,” he finishes one more forkful and has the emotional wherewithal to look at her with contrition, dropping the fork on the table. “Look, I know, I owe you a shit load of sorrys and I fucked up and I’m an idiot-”

“To put it lightly.” Claire’s brow raises as Brad suddenly starts digging through the bags he’d dumped on his own station and she’s trying not to smile because he’s the one who fucked up, not her.

“I’m no good with words and shit, so I got you these to say sorry…” he turns back around to face her and in his broad hands, being cradled like a baby is the biggest, fanciest tub of almonds she’s ever seen.

Claire takes the container as he hands it to her, and her eyes widen at the label. _Oh_. “You bought me a pound of organic marcona almonds?” she just stares at the tub in her hand. This had to have cost him at least sixty bucks _easy_.

Brad pulls off his baseball cap and runs a hand through his wild curls before replacing it, tapping the top of the tub with his finger. “Technically, more like I bribed a guy fifty bucks to set one back for me.” He grins because they both know that gifting Claire Saffitz with a pound of _organic marcona almonds _is the best way he or anyone else can apologise. “But I know you love ‘em and shit, so I thought, what the hell, let’s spend more on almonds than rent this week.”

Almonds shouldn’t mean so much to her, not with their fight and the whole mess of Delany, but they do. They mean the world. “Okay, I surrender, you’re a hundred percent forgiven,” she acquiesces, glancing back up at Brad. “Just… be my friend again?”

“C’mon, Claire, always,” he mumbles, those blue eyes back to being intense and searching for something she’s not sure she can give. “We’ll never not be friends.”

She sets the almonds back on his station before realising what’s about to happen. Brad’s thick arms wrap tightly around her torso until she lays her head on his chest without hesitation. It’s the thing she’s been missing most – these tiny moments where he’s not lying for the cameras, where the Brad in her head wants her, all of her; her sarcasm, her failures, and her weak points. In among the hurt – because it did hurt – there was something real.

Slowly, his blunt fingertips trail down the tender column of her spine, her fingertips twitching as he does. There’s barely a flick of his hand over the bare skin where her t-shirt’s rucked up and she gasps like it’s the first time a man’s ever touched her bare skin with the reverence it deserves. It’s then she hears his heart flat out racing in his chest, the catch of his breath and lips across the top of her head and it’s too much. It’s more than she ever thought this moment could be and barely believes it’s happening to her, to _them_. Claire’s hand rubs softly across his back; they refuse to prise themselves away from each other, lost in the feeling of coming back together again after shattering.

“Claire…” Brad mumbles into her hair, the hand on the small of her back pressing her even closer as if he’s terrified of her slipping away. Brad tells her he loves her by osmosis.

“Don’t say it,” she says quietly, tilting her head as he kisses her temple with tenderness and care. “Not if you don’t mean it.”

For a moment, Claire’s almost certain this feeling is going to stop and become another part of her that has to heal, but when Brad’s lips claim hers in a searing kiss, every fear Claire’s ever had becomes vapour and floats away. His fingers thread clumsily through her hair and he simply holds her, he’s quiet and still and stuck in the moment, kissing her almost chastely.

He has a girlfriend, and it’s wrong but Claire’s too deeply in love with him to think about that. It’s selfish and a mistake and bad but that makes her want him all the more and she groans when he hikes her up a little, presses into her body so the light can’t reach between them.

Her small, soft hands grip determinedly at his strong arms as he deepens the kiss. He kisses her like this, as if the world is coming to an end and Claire is the answer to save it. Brad lifts her an inch from the ground, so she’s leaning, perched on the bare edge of the countertop and her head swirls with ridiculous fantasies.

Claire knows now, how it feels to be _un_crushed, put together again by love.

“Brad,” she gasps as he drags her long hair aside and kisses down the column of her neck. “What… you and Jenn…” That makes him stop at her throat, but she feels the tension coil between them still, and they’re a spark away from burning. Claire blinks up at him still, terrified that he was going to take the feeling away. “You have a girlfriend, I don’t understand.”

“Finished,” he says breathlessly, cradling her face in his broad palm. “Done. Broke up after Delany got to take you out and I didn’t. Not fair on either me or her. It’s like you were slipping from my hands, Claire, it was driving me fucking crazy.”

It’s hard to form a coherent thought when his fingers skirt the outside of her thighs like that.

“But-”

The frustrated growl that comes from the back of his throat makes her tingle with want. “You really wanna keep talking about Jenn? Cos I’m about to toss you over my shoulder and run home with you forever, Half-Sour. This-” he gestures between them, “it ain’t a one-off.”

“No, I mean, listen,” she pulls back reluctantly as he aims straight for the hickey forming on her throat. “I heard you and Delany outside Rapo’s office last week. You said you didn’t want me. So, I guess you, what, you want me now? Please.”

Her honesty seems to snap him out of whatever ideas he’d had about going caveman on her and his eyes meet hers, his hand dropping to hers. She can see him recalling that conversation, what he _said_, what he did to make her feel unwanted. “Shit. Shit, I didn’t mean a fucking word of that, Claire, I promise. Delany, he caught me off-guard and I said random bullshit so he wouldn’t know how I was so fucking wrecked about you.”

“But you said-”

“You think I wanna spill my guts to Delany about being in love with you before anything’s even happenin’?” Brad confesses. “Use your noodle, Harvard. Jesus, all those times when it’s just you and me here, and all I wanna do is kiss you and I’m too fucking chicken shit to do it cos you’re having Skittles meltdown number three. God, and there was Delany, coming in and saying about asking you out and I figure nah, I ain’t got a shot against Delany, not when it comes to you. You’re in like major league and I’m stuck in kindergarden.”

“Kindergarten,” Claire corrects, stifling a smile. “You wanted to kiss me?”

“That’s the PG-13 version, yeah,” Brad grins back at her and she wants to never not see that happiness on his face. “Take it ole Delany weren’t up to the job of wining and dining Claire Saffitz?”

Claire pulls a face and pulls Brad back into her by the belt loops on his khakis. “You were jealous, Leone. Admit it.”

“Never,” that goofy grin melts as she leans up and kisses him again, sorely tempted to just give in to every fantasy she’s had about Brad Leone and the Test Kitchen countertops.

“Brad, wait,” Claire gasps as his hand slips over her ass. She knows he’s about to lift her up and sit her on the countertop and that’ll be it. “It’s like seven at night. And we’re at work. We can’t.”

He grumbles against her again. “Not if you’re quitting, you’re not. I’m the only one at work. I don’t give a damn.”

“What if I don’t quit?” she says slowly, looking up at him with gentle earnestness. “What if I stay?”

That makes his lips stop from their exploration of her reddening skin, though she regrets it instantly. “You really wanna talk about this _now_? We gotta lot of lost time to make up for, Claire.”

It probably shouldn’t sound as tempting as it does. They’ve been together for approximately one and a half minutes. “I mean it. D’you want me to stay?”

“I want you to do what you wanna do,” Brad replies, putting his hands flat on the countertop on either side of her. “It’s your choice. I’m with you, no matter the where or the how or if I gotta get up at four in the fricking morning and help you bake some fancy French thing because I don’t wanna be where you’re not. At least I get to have cake.”

Claire grins and laughs, shaking her head because they’ve skipped a hundred relationship steps already and it’s dizzying. “You don’t like cake, Brad.”

“Yeah, but I wanna try all yours.” He grins too and her heart soars wildly, his lips sliding over hers in a soft, sweet kiss that has her heart healed with gold and jewels.

There’s nowhere she’d rather be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, do you love Brad and Claire? Wanna come squeal and over-interpret everything with me? Head on over to [my trash pile of a tumblr page](https://queenofthecon.tumblr.com/) and say hi. I've got a fun group chat open to anyone who wants to join in with some harmless fun, too.
> 
> Oh and Tumblr anon with the fic request: I'm working on it. Hang in there for me, ok?

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, you there, yeah you. Wanna come squeal and over-interpret everything about Brad and Claire with me? Head on over to [my trash pile of a tumblr page](https://queenofthecon.tumblr.com/) and say hi.


End file.
